Unfortunately, it’s on paper and I don’t have a scanner, but…

This game is looking to perhaps be my shortest most unambitious project yet, which gives it a damn good chance of reaching polish levels far more quickly. It’s probably going to take five minutes to play, but that was true of Throwbots and it was still at least an entertaining five minutes (or so I heard, anyway).

It all dwells on being trapped in a facility and depending on a very, very finite resource with an unlimited amount of things that drain this resource.

Unfortunately, this resource is basically the player character’s lifeforce. And once it’s gone, that’s it. Game over.

It might work, it might not. Onto prototyping the mechanics!

Well this should be interesting! This will be my first time participating in ludum dare, and besides a few small unfinished game projects, I really haven’t done much of note in the gamespace. There’s lots to learn, and lots to accomplish. I hope to do plenty of both, and will be writing extensively about my experiences along the way.

I’m a python programmer at heart, and will be using pyglet in this competition, as they’re both the most familiar to me. What’s unfamiliar, however, is this trepidation I feel due to never having participated in anything like this before. Will I be able to cut through all the extraneous hangups that I usually get caught up in, and put out a pretty nice game before time is up?

In order to do this, I’ll need more mental discipline than usual. So first and foremost, I’m going to write down some Laws on my whiteboard. What? Hmm? Well of COURSE you can see them! Here’s a very broad overview.

• Look before I leap
• Generate, generate, generate
• Prune, prune, prune
• Refine, refine, refine
• Build, submit, relax

I’m going to allocate about 4 hours in the beginning to plan the initial concept, as a very liberal gift. If I end up being satisfied with my design document before then, then that’s all to the good! After that, I will spend the first day recklessly attempting to implement features decided upon in the design document. Woman scorned hath no fury like a competitive programmer. When the second day rolls around, I will take another hour or three to look at what I’ve got, where I need to be, and what I need to prune. This is where I will probably shed some tears, having to throw out ideas, but it must be done.

After that, I will enter lockdown. No new features. No new ideas. Polish polish polish! Finally, at the end I will spend some time tying things up, making the build, submitting, then blogging about my experiences. Followed by some relaxation, support for people who need help playing my game should something go wrong (oh noes!), and enjoying and rating other peoples’ games.

Now that I’ve got a plan, let’s see how closely I will stick to it. I might insert a few micro-loops of generate, prune, polish in there, depending on how well things go. In any case, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, and I wish everyone good luck, or some reasonable non-mystical facsimile!

Objectives
Primary: a well polished entry
Secondary: take time to plan things out
Tertiary: a fun game

Plan
Phase 1 – Ideas

1. Brainstorm for an hour
2. Select best idea
3. Prototype core game-play (try to take less than 3 hours)
4. Evaluate idea/prototype’s potential to meet Objectives
5. Repeat until and idea is selected, or it is 5 pm EST on Sat. (select best idea in that case)

Phase 2 – Develop Game-play

• – work until 10 am Sun
• – focus on fun and presentation

Phase 3 – Polish

1. Build a nice Load/Start screen until Noon on Sunday
2. Create a sound track until 4pm
3. Create a tutorial mode (or helper pop-ups)
4. Use any remaining time to improve polish

Sleep as needed lol

Thanks everyone for coming out and making Ludum Dare 10 a great success. A fitting close the fifth year of of the compo.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the results can be found here. Final entries can be found here.

Now, as much as we’d love everyone to idle with us in #ludumdare until April, we understand this isn’t practical for everyone. So, in addition, we have a mailing list at gamecompo.com.

To subscribe, e-mail: gamecompo-subscribe@sykhronics.com

To unsubscribe, e-mail: gamecompo-unsubscribe@sykhronics.com

And when in doubt, hit up ludumdare.com.

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Now, unlike prior years, we’ve tried to make it clear that the next compo will be in April. Anyone that’s stayed up with our shenanigans will know April is our magic month, the anniversary of the first Ludum Dare compo (the original 24 hour compo in 2002). If there’s one tradition we’ve kept over the years, it’s been holding a compo in April. Be it organized a month in advance, or pulled together last minute.

So the first order of business is to pick a weekend in April to hold the compo. I’m not looking for suggestions per se, but reasons to include or exclude a specific day. Our options include:

• April 4th-6th Weekend
• April 11th-13th Weekend
• April 18th-20th Weekend
• April 25th-27th Weekend

Ideally, we like to plan around such things as Game Industry events (GDC, E3, Game Connection, etc), Exam season (we love you students), national holidays, or any such event that either hinders or benefits the majorities chance to participate.

- – -

And in final, if you have any comments, suggestions or feedback for us, please do share them. Ludum Dare is and has always been about the community. Without you all, we’d just be an IRC channel.

Thanks again everyone, and have a great 2008.